I've been writing, and saying, and believing, for the past year and a half, that I'm doing relatively okay, in regard to my daughter's passing. And in a sense, it's true. But what I've realized now is that there is a deeper level of grief that I haven't faced yet. One that I don't know if I can, and that I most assuredly couldn't have at the time.
Ever since that day, I have found myself unable to stick to my diet for more than a week or two at a time, or keep up with exercise, or stay focused and motivated on any kind of work, whether physical or mental, or do anything, really, that is oriented to the long or even medium term. In my old life, I used to imagine a better life, a blessed marriage, a family, community, work, purpose, and I made for myself goals, such as getting healthy or planting a garden, that were suited to that life. But now, I don't seem to be able to summon the faith and hope to be able to maintain them. I don't seem to be able to picture myself in any kind of happy life anymore, or at least I am not able to make my subconscious believe it. I can consciously picture such things, but deep down, my heart just says, "What's the point?"
Deep down, the person my heart really wants to see and talk to is Adina. Adina was my only and best friend for some of the worst years of my life--the years when I had reached bottom and begun to make an effort to change direction, but hadn't made much progress yet. She and I lived alone, together, after the other kids had left, and I got to know her not just as a daughter, but as a person and a friend.
I think that perhaps, all the way down at the bottom of it, I feel that I don't have the right to have a happy and blessed life, when my daughter is dead. It should be I who is gone and she who is still living. I wish it was. I especially feel that I don't have that right when I think of the many ways in which I failed her.
Obviously, it's grief and depression, which I've repressed, its being too great and too deep for me to contemplate consciously. And perhaps some survivor's guilt. When I try to fast, or when I'm on the diet with no carbs (comfort food), this becomes glaringly clear, for then the suffering becomes so intense that I simply cannot continue. Not that it's always consciously about her--there are many other things for me to be anxious, sad, and grieved about--but I think that that's what lies at the bottom of it. Before it happened, I was down 40 pounds again, exercising regularly, had been on keto for something like a year with exceptions only for special occasions, and was generally feeling good--was happy, even, once Carolina had come into my life. But after, everything changed, including my ability to be fully present in that relationship, or really in my own life, even. I stumbled around the continent like a sleepwalker, unable to fully enjoy, and not even really caring very much, about all the wondrous and glorious beauty I was seeing, and the more that I was missing because I just didn't feel up to going out and seeing it. If things had been as they were in that short time after I met Carolina and before Adina died, it would have been the journey of a lifetime; a blessed time; a paradise of love, beauty, and joy. But instead it was a wandering in a misty world of almost-nothing, like the world Frodo sees when he puts on the Ring. Even the beautiful woman beside me, loving me, seemed distant and remote, like there was an invisible barrier between us. She kept telling me that I was depressed, and I kept saying, "I'm fine." But I wasn't.
I had, out of my whole life now, two or three months of real happiness.
I'm not sure at this point what to do with it. Obviously, I'm going to pray. I could "talk to" someone, e.g., a therapist, but they're generally worthless and unhelpful, or even harmful, and I'm definitely not going back on antidepressants. I guess I've just got to face it and work through it, which is probably why I was shown it now. Perhaps it is the way through which I will reach a deeper level of surrender, obedience, and self-abnegation, and thereby a higher level of spiritual power and union with God.
